On fleeting existence and uncertain happiness

The late GDR era in photography

Matthias Leupold (*1959), Ohne Titel, Berlin, 1985

The end of the GDR is not the end of its images. Which perspectives do we choose to form a picture of a society whose inner constitution still leaves many questions unanswered today? The GDR captured in photographs is a chronologically closed collection field, the scope of which has just begun to be explored. With the historical distance of three decades, it is worth looking at the known material again and adding further positions to it.

The views of the late GDR era up to the upheaval of the early 1990s move from documentary practices to artistic and staged visual worlds, include the media border crosser photographic film, and question the relationship between film and photography.

The photography exhibition An den Rändern taumelt das Glück (On fleeting existence and uncertain happiness), which was first shown at the ACC Galerie Weimar, is now making a stop in Berlin-Hellersdorf and combines different genres and protagonists. A selection of over 360 images by 37 photographers will be re-examined in two self-contained stages.

nGbK work group station urbaner kulturen: Jochen Becker, Eva Hertzsch, Margarete Kiss, Constanze Musterer, Adam Page
 

Part 1: September 14 – November 16, 2024

With works by Claus Bach, Kurt Buchwald, Margit Emmrich, Seiichi Furuya, Gerhard Gäbler, Christina Glanz, Wolfgang Gregor, Gerald Große, Steffen Heckel, Harald Kirschner, Matthias Leupold, Wolf Lützen/Hans Pieler, Barbara Metselaar Berthold, Christine Radack, Ilse Ruppert, Einar Schleef, Jim Schütz, Günter Starke, Ines Thate-Keler, Jörn Vanhöfen, Siegfried Wittenburg, Ulrich Wüst, Renate Zeun, Helmut Ziebarth and an artistic intervention by Kristin Wenzel.

Part 2: November 23, 2024 – January 25, 2025

With works by Peter Badel, Gerd Danigel, Christiane Eisler, Margit Emmrich, Seiichi Furuya, Christine Furuya-Gössler, Gerhard Gäbler, Christina Glanz, Anselm Graubner, Wolfgang Gregor, Gerald Große, Ingrid Hartmetz, Harald Kirschner, Thomas Kläber, Matthias Leupold,  Barbara Metselaar Berthold, Katharina Müller, Christine Radack, Enkhbat Roozon, Andreas Rost, Ilse Ruppert, Günter Starke, Jim Schütz, Gabriele Stötzer, Ines Thate-Keler and an artistic intervention by Anke Heelemann/Fotothek für vergessene Privatfotografien.
 

The Berlin adaptation of the exhibition project “An den Rändern taumelt das Glück” is a cooperation between the neue Gesellschaft für bildende Kunst and the ACC Galerie Weimar and their collaboration with the research network “Diktaturerfahrung und Transformation”, funded by the Federal Ministry of Education and Research (BMBF).

As part of Berlin Art Week

Runtime: Sat, 14/09/2024 to Sat, 25/01/2025

Takes place here:

• Station urbaner Kulturen/nGbK Hellersdorf